After first noticing Tweets relating to the developing story of a gunman storming the Discovery Channel building not far from our office in Georgetown, we have launched another instance of Slurp140 dedicated to tracking all tweets using the #discovery hashtag:http://www.slurp140.com/discovery/
A picture from @jdivenerea purporting to be of the gunman has received over 27,339 views in 1 hour and 50 minutes. Watching the commentary unfold, a rough consensus has formed that this may actually be of an undercover police officer. http://yfrog.com/2mhdmdj
As we have just started tracking tweets referencing “@grayformayor,” “Vince Gray”, “@fenty2010” “Adrian Fenty” and “#dcmayor” the numbers you see reflected in the total number of tweets and total people are reflective of all tweets since 12:00 pm. today.
In looking for Twitter accounts of campaign staffers, the only account that stands out is that of veteran campaign strategist @Mo Elleithee. We will keep looking, but if you know of other senior staffers with Twitter accounts let us know!
Quick facts at a glance:
Note: We are not affiliated with either campaign or Washington D.C. Board of Elections. (Nor am I related to Chairman Gray
Last week, Facebook announced a set of changes that its development platform is set to undergo within the coming months. In a blog post, the company talked about the enhancements coming to the Facbeook API. A significant change will be the replacement of FBML with iFrames, with the former having been the gold standard for designing visually appealing Fan Pages of the last several years. In fact, by the end of 2010, Facebook will no longer allow for new applications to be created using the antiquated FBML.
How will these new changes affect social media CRM on Facebook?
Short answer: it won’t.
Long answer: The changes will make it easier for developers to bring more dynamic functions to Facebook pages, games, and other applications. On August 23rd, all tabbed pages in profiles and fan Pages were readjusted to be only 520 pixels in width. This standardized (albeit more narrow) width allows for implementation of across-the-board support for IFrames – which enable designers and developers to easily break up a page into multiple segments with some static and some dynamic sections. Iframes also tend to use lower bandwidth, when compared to single-frame variable content that has to continuously reload.
The Bivings Group is a full service Internet communications firm, whose own developers are incredibly excited about this change. Chris Roane, a TBG developer who's familiar with FBLM noted that:
It always seemed ridiculous to me that Facebook would implement a specific language for developers to use with their system for web development (FBML). Why not tap into the same coding system that everything else uses across the internet? Instead of having to figure out how to work with a new coding system, developers and programmers can use the systems that they have always been using. This will not only make pages easier to develop, but applications should appear more seamless as it will be easier to make more complicated applications run directly in a facebook tab/page.
Although the tweets about social media and tours through wine country are sure to make you jealous, for anyone looking to keep track of the action leading up to, during, and after the event you can visit http://www.slurp140.com/wow10
On August 24th, @TylerGray and I attended a networking event hosted by @MediaBistro. This was one of several social media gatherings that our staff has attended over the course of the past several weeks, and we wanted to give you, our reader, a glimpse into what the events were actually like.
The below video is a short look into what the DC online media networking events often look like. We also took the time to interview a few of the interesting people we met at the MediaBistro event. Hopefully their unique jobs and innovate use of social media inspires others to think outside the box. Below is their contact information. If you would like to get featured on The Bivings Report at the next networking event, feel free to tweet @Bivings and let us know.
Guerilla and social media marking campaigns all dream of going viral – a la Old Spice Man on a Horse – but some advertising really strikes out. Below is a look at two particularly bad unfortunate ad campaigns that resulted in more bad press than good. Let this be a lesson that for every Old Spice man on a horse, there is also an Aqua Teen Hunger Force bomb scare.
Mafia Wars: Leading to Wars with City Hall
No more than a few weeks ago, the video game maker Zynga was advertising for its Mafia Wars Las Vegas expansion pack.Allegedly, this company authorized an ad agency to plant fake $25,000 bills on the sidewalks of San Francisco.The plan was for pedestrians to pick up said bills, and find the address of the Mafia Wars website, where they could get information on Mafia Wars: Las Vegas. However, the City of San Francisco did not take the marketing tactic very well – and reported that the cleanup effort was of great expense to the city. The San Francisco’s city attorney’s office is now officially investigating the incident.
“The Last Exorcism” and Chatroulette: Two iffy things that did not go great together
Everyone’s favorite random video chat website Chatroulete was seemingly the perfect medium on which to promote the Lionsgate horror film The Last Exorcism.Its complete anonymity lents itself well to beginning short-lived interactions with strangers.
Playing off of this random notion, the marketing team behind The Last Exorcism decided to show a taped video to those connecting to it on the Chatroulette . Subsequently, they released a video on their YouTube channel showing the “best of” reactions of those watching the exorcism video. In the clip, a female begins gesturing to remove her clothing, when suddenly her eyes roll back and she screams into the camera before the screen goes black. Meanwhile, the viewer is expected to look at the reactions on the male’s faces – which show notable distress.
While the Chatroulette “social experiment” service is currently down, the videos were released as part of a marketing campaign to drum up excitement for the movie. However, this is not the first YouTube video in this movie’s marketing mix. A few weeks ago, a website called Church of Saint Marks appeared online with supposed “information” on exorcism. Meanwhile, the site actually featured one of the main characters from the movie, Reverend Cotton Marcus of the fictional Saint Marks Church.
Last night I was on Yelp checking out reviews of Spike Mendelsohn’ new Capital Hill pizza joint We, The Pizza (not good). I have a Yelp account but wasn’t logged in, so noticed a clever way they are using Facebook’s API. If you are not logged in to Yelp, you’ll see a note at the bottom of the page telling you how many of your Facebook friends are on Yelp and encouraging you to sign up.
This is really smart. Yelp is essentially a social network, so people are more likely to join and be active if their friends are already using the service. Well done Yelp.
Far and away the largest presence in the current social media market, Facebook has decided to place it’s sizable hand into the growing area of location-based social media.
With a thoroughly-blogged-and-tweeted press conference yesterday at their Palo Alto headquarters, Facebook unleashed the newest addition to their social media arsenal, Facebook Places. A service primarily based around showing your Facebook friends where you are and seeing their present locations, Facebook Places follows the massive recent growth of location-based social media services such as Foursquare and Gowalla. Facebook Places functions much like both of those applications, with “check-ins” and tips about nearby locations such as restaurants, shops and services.
The true question from the everyday user (and the media), is whether or not Facebook Places will turn out to be a premature nail-in-the-coffin for Foursquare and Gowalla. The deciding factor may be the new additions Facebook Places makes to the traditional location-based social media experience. For instance, with Facebook Places you could check-in somewhere and then tag the friends that are there as also checked-in. You could view a map of the surrounding area and which friends have checked in nearby. These new capabilities as well as the fact that more people use Facebook than any other social media outlet could mean that Facebook Places could soon dominate location-based applications.
Speaking of, where are Foursquare and Gowalla in all of this? As a matter of fact, they’re right in the middle of it. Facebook Places will totally integrate both services, so that if you already have more mayorships than you can keep track of in Foursquare or Trips you’ve always been meaning to take with Gowalla, they’ll be supported through Facebook Places.
Also, it looks like Facebook may be facing the same central issue as the other two main players in location-based social media: monetization. Although users are submitting mountains of data based around businesses, activities and places, the applications themselves aren’t making money. When asked about this, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company is more focused on the application’s three core components: checking-in, finding your friends, and finding new places-and that they’ll have to “check-in” later about making money.
The Bivings Report (TBR) is a source of news, insight, research, analysis and conversation on web-based communications and its increasingly powerful role in the economy, politics and society. TBR content is created, posted and managed by internet strategists, media/communications analysts, web developers, designers and programmers, all of whom are employees of The Bivings Group.
For live video, our friends at TBD have been doing an excellent job: “Live Video: Discovery Channel gunman hostage standoff” 
No more than a few weeks ago, the video game maker Zynga was advertising for its Mafia Wars Las Vegas expansion pack.
